


how the zombie star brightens the lacuna void

by saintpyrite



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: M/M, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26471620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintpyrite/pseuds/saintpyrite
Summary: Virgil has belonged to the void for a long time, now he's seeking out the light of a star.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	how the zombie star brightens the lacuna void

He’s drifting.

Virgil is drifting without purpose or direction in the endless void. The expanse of the black ocean stretches out as far as the eye can see, vast and infinite and so far from the place he once called home. There is no warmth to be found here, no voice to guide him as the darkness envelopes him, acting the part of an old friend who holds him in their cold, dead arms with no words of comfort to be had because the void is all Virgil has ever known and it has never taught him comfort. 

If he had stayed where he belonged, Virgil wouldn’t have to worry about the cold under his skin and burying itself into his bones. There would be no fear of what he may come across, whether he’ll find what he is looking for out here and even if he did find what he sought, there is no guarantee it’ll ever be home as the void before had been. 

Virgil cannot return though, even if it means he is destined to drift in the vast and endless black for eternity. He wonders if it’ll consume him, the inky black dripping and running down the canvas of pale skin, colouring him pitch-black. Time stretches forever here and yet, time does not pass either. He’d be this way forever, drifting through the abyss in a lost search for something  _ more _ . 

He seeks greater heights and brighter stars, ones with light that stretch out across the deep, drowning expanse of the abyss that he drifts in and he wonders if he'll find light out there. He wishes to reach out and feel the warmth against his skin, watch as the soft glow of the stars reflect on the ice of his flesh and cast light over the dust of his bones.

Virgil wishes to feel something new, something he couldn’t find in the gaps of the void he called home or the arms of a neutron star who only sought to crush him under the weight of his own fragments, a light once there had died long ago. 

He could feel the solar winds ripple through the universe and gravity pull him forward, Virgil could feel the change in the ocean of black and he knew there was something out there calling his name. 

Virgil is drifting.

_ (Virgil counts the seconds he's in the dark, wondering when he'll see the light.)  _

* * *

He wasn't prepared. 

He couldn’t have prepared himself in any way for the brightness that would threaten to blind him, how foolish to think he could stand in the presence of stars as if he belonged here, as if the light wasn’t too much to bear.

When he meets them, Virgil is overwhelmed by their brilliance and magnificence as they shine bright with a radiance that nothing could dare to compare. He finds himself enraptured by how larger than life they are, the strength and raw power condensed down so that something as small and insignificant as himself may gaze upon them. Virgil finds himself staring down into the fiery eyes of a star. He finds himself embraced by the kind words and the warmth of another. He is pulled into the orbit of intense eyes that see through his very being and when he retreats into the black, he can hear their voices call to him from the star fields beyond his reach.

He must return to the void, the light is overwhelming and fear grips his body made of cosmic dust and asteroid ice. These people live in a sea of stars, an infinite expanse of light that illuminates the darkness Virgil has grown so familiar. There is only one person who calls him back to the light, only one thing that tests Virgil’s will to return to the void from whence he came.

For Virgil, he is nothing but a lacuna, the dark matter that shouldn’t exist in the space between the stars and yet, he finds he cannot leave him and when his eyes meet  _ his _ own, deep pools of blue, he finds himself drawn in by a gravitational pull he cannot ignore. The man is a god of the cosmos, watercolour nebulae and painted galaxies shape his flesh and his eyes that shine with the light of a million stars enrapture Virgil more than words can speak. Virgil does not belong in the presence of stars but it is impossible to pull away, the ancient dust of his bones trembles in the way the man’s voice commands the cosmos, so he returns for him and him alone.

Virgil always returns. 

_ (Virgil wants to reach out and touch him but he fears he may burn.)  _

* * *

The man calls himself Logan.

Virgil likes the name and finds himself committing the name to memory, sounding out each syllable on the end of his tongue. The vacuum of space captures it in its maw and swallows it down, the sound never escapes the expanse of the pitch black and it’s for the best, Logan doesn’t need to know how he traces the shape of it on his lips. No good can come from these feelings, it is better if Virgil kept them to himself.

The two of them meet time and time again in the space between them and each time, Virgil is pulled into Logan’s orbit where he learns about the man, overcast by an umbra of his own fear because the more he knows, the harder he falls and it is the most terrifying thing to experience. Virgil feels his body quake and tremble when he hears Logan call for him but it's too soon, too close to home to be called by name but he has never been so desperate to make himself vulnerable in the presence of another. 

By the gods though, Virgil is in love with the aether and it might be the end of him as he knows it. Fear grips him tighter, the ice in his veins run cold and he remembers being nothing but the hypothetical, the matter that makes up empty space so those like Logan can illuminate the night sky. He thinks it's love, no, Virgil is certain this fragile parallax they have found themselves in is love because he's known it once before but never like this. 

This fragile orbit they have found themselves in, circling one another until one day, Logan will eclipse Virgil. His inferiority in the presence of a celestial body is inevitable and Virgil accepts that he will be left behind at the prospect of better things to come. He can only hope that in the darkness, Logan will allow him the light to cast him in a penumbra. 

Yet he returns time and time again to their place within the galaxy that only they know and Virgil knows he cannot allow himself another weakness, how fear would ruin them and drive them to the brink of collapse. Logan is so close enough to touch though, fingers outstretched but hesitant and for a moment, he thinks Logan may be hesitating too. 

Wishful thinking on comets and meteors, too many late nights listening to tales of constellations and forlorn lovers. 

He wishes Logan looked at him that way. 

_ (Have you ever heard the story of Vega and Altair?)  _

* * *

He left. 

Virgil fled back into the void to drift alone, he'd flown too close to the sun and he was burning from the inside out. He could have had it all, it was in his grasp but fear had a mighty hold and Virgil has never been a brave man in the face of vulnerability, dragging him back to the abyss. 

He wants to go back to the place he was beginning to call home but the darkness is familiar, it's comforting in a way that he has been reminded one too many times. Virgil is certain light could not breach here, nobody would chase him to the expanse of the black maria, the nothingness that calls his name that few know. 

Yet, Virgil sees light stretch across the cosmos where he thought light could not reach. They come for him in his moment of need and Logan pulls him back into his gravitational field, the magnetism between them is incomprehensible and once more, Virgil cannot help but feel vulnerable as if he was exposing how the universe moulded him down to the last spec of cosmic dust in his bones to the ice crystals embedded in the flesh of his heart and only Logan could make him feel such a way that it would draw his name from his lips, open himself up to them when he had kept it so close to his chest before. 

Once he thought loving Logan was equivalent to being eclipsed, an inferior satellite in the presence of someone bigger than he could ever be and he'd be cast forever in the shadow of someone better when they came along. Nothing more than an afterthought in the mind of a god who could shape the cosmos and speak sonnets of the stars because a man like that, he deserves something more than the darkness between the stars. 

Now though, Virgil thinks loving Logan feels more along the lines of a black hole, caught in a stellar explosion and pulled into the collapse. Virgil is dragged over the event horizon where time bends and breaks when Logan presses Virgil's hands to his chest to feel the heartbeat of a star there and if Virgil keeps this going, he's going to be pulled into the singularity until nothing is left.

Virgil would give him everything too, he would give him everything so long as Logan kept looking at him with those eyes and kept him close like this. Virgil knows light nor darkness escapes a black hole once it captures you but for once, he lets Logan pull him in. 

He never leaves again. 

_ (Virgil escaped once but he might just let himself fall the second time around.)  _

* * *

"Virgil." 

Logan calls for him by name and it's a sweet melody when Virgil hears it and Virgil finds that he's adjusted to the light, being around someone as bright and brilliant as Logan. He can't go back to the darkness now, the black expanse of the celestial sea is a memory when he's surrounded by lustre of Logan's presence, everything from how his eyes shine to the warmth of their fingers brushing against one another. 

He's been working up the courage to say those words Virgil has longed for Logan to hear from him. There is no eclipse coming for him, nothing will take Logan away this time and he won't waste this opportunity no matter how much fear tries to keep him from it. No, it would be a crime to let him slip through his fingers when he'd grown to memorise the sound of Logan's name on his lips and the rhythm of the pulsar heart burning bright in Logan's chest, pulsating under his palm.

The two of them spend their time side by side, word for word matching for every syllable. The two are lost in each other's orbit and there is no escape but Virgil is damned, he would never wish to escape the pull of Logan's singularity, more than happy to collapse with him in a stellar explosion. 

For loving a star is a dangerous risk to take but Virgil is willing to take this one, more than willing because he's putting himself in the line of fire, knowing this may make or break him. 

Virgil is ready to burn. 

_ (Virgil had thought loving Logan would be akin to a black hole, how wrong he was.) _

* * *

"Logan," Virgil doesn't look him in the eye when he speaks, "I think I'm in love with you." 

There is a hush over the atmosphere, taking in the light of the stars and fear tries to pull him under until Logan rests his hand atop his own. 

"I know, Virgil." 

* * *

Virgil had thought loving Logan would be like loving a black hole, giving him everything over and over again as he was dragged across the event horizon, stretched beyond time until there was nothing left to give. 

He was so wrong, Virgil had never been so wrong in his entire life and it was a magnificent and devouring thing to love and be loved by Logan because that man was no black hole, he was a supernova when their reactions fused into one. 

When Logan kisses him, pulling him in with the ferocity of a collapsing star, Virgil can feel the heat burn away at him. It's intense, the power behind the stellar explosion enraptured him and burns him in the best way possible and when he feels as if the moment has passed, that the embers of their star dissipated into the aether and would die there, Logan finds a way to pull together the remnants. 

They do not collapse, they burn brighter than before. A zombie star is a star that never dies, exploding time after time in a supernova of emotions and that is what loving Logan is like. 

To love Logan is akin to a zombie star; there are instances where Virgil fears the end, the collapse of what they have built but then Logan kisses him again, a supernova in slow motion and they're still left standing. 

That is what it is to love Logan. 

_ (the zombie star that brightens the lacuna void.)  _

**Author's Note:**

> Someone called BeepBeep commented on "the eyes of a storm" asking if I'd be willing to do a companion piece or a sequel so I did. I'm not certain if it's any good, I wrote this on a whim at 2AM but I hope you enjoyed nonetheless.


End file.
